E-Mail Marketing and Click-Through Rates: Part II

According to the "Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks" report by Epsilon, 94.1% of marketing e-mails were delivered in Q1 2009.

In addition, 22.1% of e-mails were opened and 6.1% were clicked through. Open rates and click-throughs were up slightly from Q4 2008. Deliveries were down.

(To compare these numbers to figures from a MailerMailer study, see E-Mail Marketing and Click-Through Rates.)

How often e-mails were opened and clicked varied with the industry of the sender—and the size of the list.

General financial services e-mails were opened most frequently, followed by general business products and services, and credit cards and banks.

The least popular categories were apparel, publishing and media, consumer packaged goods and electronics.

Click-through rates in January through March 2009 were highest for consumer packaged goods, followed by general financial services and pharmaceuticals.

"Consumers are savvier than ever and e-mail inboxes are often oversaturated," wrote the authors of the report.

Nevertheless, they said that "e-mail continues to be an effective marketing vehicle" that "drives strong results."